Empty Shadows
by GlitchedMindy
Summary: Lucifer decided to sacrifice himself so Chloe and his friends and family would be safe. But beautiful sacrifices don't always lead to happy endings. [Tags: Heavy Angst, Hell, Post-Lucifer Season 04, Memory Loss, Descent into Madness, Dark, Hopeless ending]


**Author Note:** First published on 2019-08-23 on Ao3, this was my very first fanfiction :). Many thanks to ObliObla and Katadactyl for the beta-reading and their wonderful advice. Any remaining mistakes and style weaknesses are mine because English is not my first language.

Also be warned, this story will HURT.

* * *

It was small details, at first.

Lucifer tilting his head in the direction of no one at all, looking like he was listening to something, his eyes suddenly shinier. His eyes, which were dull and cloudy most of the time, now, like he wasn't in the moment anymore, wasn't really _there_ anymore.

Smiles, tender ones, addressed towards shadows, when he had stopped smiling for so long, his face a blank, uncaring mask.

Small, soft gestures made into the empty, ash ridden air.

He started to _forget_, too. Demons would find him wandering in some remote part of Hell, seemingly lost. When prodded, he seemed surprised. Surprised to be talked to. Surprised to be there. Surprised to be in Hell, at all. And then, when the reality came back to him, his eyes clouded a bit more, and he would simply return to his throne in a powerful, yet wobbly, flutter of wings.

He stopped paying attention to the struggles of his demons and the fine-tuning of Hell. He kept getting distracted by something that wasn't there, and it became harder and harder to bring him back to the moment.

He talked to someone no one could see. Talked to it in hushed, enamored whispers. Giggled maniacally from time to time.

He started trying to solve murders that didn't happen.

Then started killing demons at random, to play at solving the murders.

Then started entering Hell Loops, interfering, twisting, solving murders in those. Forgot they were Hell Loops. Started again, and again, and again, even if nothing changed, until something made him wander out of the loop, vaguely perplexed.

He didn't solve anything. Couldn't. He found random culprits and punished them, giggling madly, lost in some dark, unstable fantasy.

The demons didn't dare to do anything, after a while. The worst times were when he snapped out of it, be it by reason or by violence.

Some had tried to flee. But he hadn't forgotten _that_. No one could leave Hell. No one did.

Some had tried their chance at killing him. But his survival instinct was still strong, made him _pay attention_, if only for a brief, brutal moment.

And when the moment of clarity stretched for too long, despair and pain and unbearable _longing_ settled in again.

Drove him to fits of unimaginable violence, destroying anything in his path, alive or not, just to escape the _pain_.

Drove him to bouts of self-destruction.

Until he tried to annihilate himself in one of the lakes of fire.

It didn't work.

Hell shuddered while he screamed in agony, refusing to die, yet refusing to _stop trying_.

Time stretched, until silence finally fell.

When he came out of the fiery pit, he was lost again in the shadows of what was left of his own mind. His human glamor was gone, but he didn't seem to notice.

Didn't notice the tails. The horns. The spikes. The claws. The wings. The twisted form. Didn't notice the monster.

He listened to the shadows, and giggled, and simply _forgot_.

Hell was tilting around him and his torment. Loops turned dangerous, even for the demons. Corridors became traitorous, sending the denizens of Hell into hidden pits. Souls got out of their rooms without meaning to, and… _Something_ happened to the souls that wandered too close to the Devil but no one dared to ask.

His form twisted more. He didn't notice.

The demons brought the souls back to their cells when they could. Whatever happened to the souls in _his_ vicinity was worse, far worse than the loops.

At some point in time, the Lord of Hell ordered his demons to love and obey his Queen. But there was no queen, only darkness and ashes and his low maddened whispers and the hundreds of red eyes glistening in the dark, watching, watching but not _seeing_, not really, _not anymore_. But he grew so, so angry when they disobeyed him. Angrier when they disobeyed _her_. And how to obey something that didn't exist?

Traitors only deserved death.

So they died.

One day, an angel came down, tried talking to the King of Hell.

The King didn't hear, didn't see, didn't remember. Tried to fight the creature that wanted to take his queen from him. Howled in pure, desperate hatred when the monster managed, barely, to escape him.

Souls stopped trickling into Hell soon after that.

He forgot, he forgot, he _forgot_. The only things that he could, _would_ remember were beautiful blue eyes and dirty blonde hair and betrayal and love and pain and longing and despair and punishment. Nothing else mattered to him anymore, so he forgot. Forgot Mazikeen. Forgot Hell. Forgot Earth. Forgot Heaven. Forgot his father, his brothers, his demons, his humans. Forgot who he was, in the end.

A long, long, _long_ time passed.

When a light-filled soul with - sad, so sad - blue eyes and blonde hair wandered into Hell, it was empty.

Save for a maddened creature that haunted the bare lands, talking to the emptiness, laughing hollowly and hurting, hurting, _hurting_.

He never recognized her, not even when she plunged the blade into his beating heart, the only thing that still looked human in that mass of burned flesh and thorns and whispering shadows and claws and eyes and maws and wings and _pain_. Not even when, in his agony, he lashed out and struck at the core of her soul, and she let out a cry. He'd forgotten who she was, too.

Still, his last breath was _Chloe_.

And then Hell was empty.


End file.
